On Life, Stories, and Music

Category Archive: Life

You see, I moved to a new city a few weeks ago. I didn’t have a job to go to, I didn’t move for family, I just moved because God said so.

No other explanation. God wanted me to go, and I couldn’t say no to that. But that comes with a new set of issues. Like, what in the world am I going to do for employment, where should we live, stuff like that. So, you could say I’m a bit scared of what is to come.

But I have faith.

If God is truly God, and He wants me in a place, wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that He would give me the resources to stay and prosper? On paper, that sounds like a perfect. logical argument. Unfortunately, in real life, my faith and my fear fight all the time. If my human eyes can’t see it, then it must not be true. But my faith tells me that God will come through, He has to because it’s His nature.

Bottom line: faith will cause fear in you. Your human mind and heart can’t understand your spiritual faith. Part of being faithful is facing that fear. Having faith is not the removal of fear. It is choosing not to believe that fear.

Whatever God is telling you to do, go and do it. If it is from Him, He will be at your side. If He is for you, nothing can destroy you.

Sometimes throughout my days I forget what I have been given. I focus on the negative. I don’t have that, this is stupid, if only I had this I could move forward.

I need to quit doing that.

I need to be more positive. We all should be. I’ve got so many things that half of the people on this planet couldn’t imagine having. Like, say, my own personal laptop? Or my salary? I give a tiny portion of my income to sponsor a child, and they are taken care of.

Sometimes I just need to suck it up and deal with my struggles, because the journey is often as important as the destination. It’s all a process.

I’ve been realizing lately how little faith I have. I’m not actively trusting God to take care of things around me.

It’s all the things I want to control. My job, my music, my finances; I want all of these to be under my complete control. And I fool myself into thinking that if I could only work harder, try harder, know more, that I could do that.

The fact of the matter is that I never really have control to begin with. With anything, other than my own person. Sometimes, not much of that either!

God knows and controls all of these things. And if I am doing what He has asked me to do, then I will be ok. Might not be easy or fun, but it will be ok. Check Romans 8. Or Matthew 6.

You know, that place that Seth Godin talks about. The place where you need to decide whether to push forward or not.

I’ve been pulled in a lot of directions lately. I don’t really mind those directions, I’m just about hitting my max number of projects to do at once before my head bursts into flames. Okay, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea. I just don’t know how long I can keep this up. And I think my effectiveness at each project is dwindling.

So, I need to make a decision. Do I push through to (hopefully) be much better at what I’m doing? Or do I drop something and keep focus on the things I’ve kept?

The hard part is I don’t want to give it up. I think I’m pretty good at it, and if I really get down to it, I could be even better. If only I had more time, he says.

Everyone wants to know how to do something. Sometimes it’s learning a new skill, and sometimes enhancing something you already know. Whatever that is, there seems to be one good way to do so.

Go and do it.

Sometimes the best way to learn something is to be thrown into the situation and you having to just learn it. Think swimming. You can talk about it all day, learn strokes on paper, practice breathing, but until you actually get tossed into the deep end, it’s all head knowledge. Once you have to tread water, it becomes learned (or you learn you can’t swim!).

Here’s another thing. You can’t learn something if you never do it to begin with. You can’t learn the guitar having never picked one up. You can’t learn to write if you never put pen to paper.

So here’s some encouragement for you, and some friendly pressure: go do something if you want to learn how. You’ll never know unless you try.

As some of you no doubt saw these past few days on my Twitter feed, my grandmother passed away on Friday after a massive stroke. I still don’t know what to think or do, even after her memorial service last night.

The biggest shock for me was the fact that my grandparents visited over Christmas and all was well. Nothing really hinted at the future.

But what I really want to say is how fragile and precious this life is. That we can be fine one minute and gone the next. I think we forget that in our day-to-day stuff.

And also how utterly unfair and cruel death is. I haven’t experienced many family members passing away yet. But I believe God made us to be with one another forever, and every time someone leaves this world I’m angry and upset. I don’t want to say goodbye, even if I know that we will be together again in Heaven, because I shouldn’t have to. People for whom we care about that deeply should be with us, not gone. And the only explanation I can find is that we were not made to say goodbye.

So, I don’t know if there is a point to this post. Today is just an outpouring of my many emotions from this weekend. Just never take for granted this fragile life.

For my readers, I’ve been very slack on my posting recently. It’s been 2 months since I posted last. That’s too long.

In any case, I think my blogging hiatus was a little needed for me, if a little abrupt. I’ve been working at a new job, coding new themes on the side, and playing like crazy at my church’s Sunday night service. No excuses, but I’ve felt very busy.

As a New Year’s resolution, I guess, I’m going to try and post at least once a week. Also, I’ll probably be doing a redesign on this blog. I’ve been learning a ton about web design and development and I feel like it’s time for a new look. If you’ve got some things you like or hate about this look, leave a comment; I’m always looking for a little feedback.

The story goes like this: A father had two sons. The younger was, well, young and thought he knew better. He wanted his inheritance, and his father gave it to him. He went away, blew all of the money on wine, women, and song, and ended up in the most degrading place he could think of, fighting not to starve.

Then something great happens. The words in the Bible say that “…he came to himself…”.* We’ll be back here in a second.

After this, the son realizes that even his dad’s servants were better off, and that he’d go home and beg to be a servant. When he gets home, his father runs to meet him and welcomes his lost son back into the family, not as a servant, but as a son. (There’s a bit more, so go read it in Luke 15).

As I emphasized before, there’s a huge turning point in this story. The son comes to himself. Meaning he comes back from his rebellious stage to the truth. The words also imply that something happened inside the son. They imply there is some point that we should all be at, and we can get away from, but we must choose to head towards.

This is important. God will let us run away from Him. He will always be there, but He won’t force you to stay. It’s a choice. And you and I choose. When the son “came to himself” he chose to go back. It’s subtle. We control our direction. We can either go away from God, or go toward Him.

So, if we’re away from God, we must make the choice to go back. If we are near Him, we must make the choice to stay.

It’s all about coming to myself.

* The ESV and the KJV say “came to himself” and the NIV says “came to his senses”. Same idea.